The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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218285 Sgt.Pilot. Robert Short "Roy" Timewell Royal Air Force 539 Squadron from:Burscough, Lancs (d.4th Oct 1942) Sgt.Pilot Robert Timewell was a distant cousin of my wife, her surname is also Timewell which is quite an unusual name. He was assigned to 539 Squadron. In October 1942, he took off without permission and flew over his hometown of Burscough to perform aerobatics for his family but it went horribly wrong and he crashed his Hurricane into the local playing field killing himself instantly. We visit his grave when we can. The pub his parents owned is still there trading under another name. David Rimmer Add to this record.  Additional Information: My father-in-law, Bryan Swift, is now 87 years old. He talks about this often because not only did it happen in his home town of Burscough, but he witnessed it, at the age of 12 years old. He also played a part in the attempted rescue of the pilot because he recalls being first on the scene after the plane crashed and, together with someone else, helped pull the pilot out and away from the burning wreckage. He also threw soil on the pilot to extinguish the flames. His own story though had an awful twist because the following day he was taking sandwiches and a drink to a soldier who was camping nearby. On the way he revisited the site of the crash and found a round of live ammunition from the plane. Being 12 he took it to the soldier who configured to detonate the round. Apparently the soldier half buried it in the ground and hit it with an object. In the resulting explosion fragments of shrapnel hit my father-in-law in the face and one piece entered his eye. As a result he lost the eye and has lived his life since then with a constant reminder of this very sad event and the part he played in it. Stephen Blakeman Reply Related Content: No. 539 Squadron Royal Air Force Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.